


Sea of Years

by foxxing



Category: GOT7
Genre: Heavy pining, M/M, One Shot, Soulmate AU, dad!jb, happy happy happy ending, lawyer!jinyoung
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-15
Updated: 2018-02-15
Packaged: 2019-03-18 22:52:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13691511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foxxing/pseuds/foxxing
Summary: “Are you stuck on the soulmate thing again?”Jinyoung sags backward in the dark leather of his office chair. “Well you don’t need to say it like that, do you?”“I have to say it like that,” Jackson mumbles, attempting to talk around all the bright, sugar coated candy. “Because youarestuck on it.”





	Sea of Years

**Author's Note:**

> We try to find  
> I don't want to change your mind  
> I'll make up my mind  
> Then a sea of years pass inside  
> Why is it I need a thousand lives?  
> Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh  
> [♡](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZYR3FM0njE)  
>   
> happy valentine's day, everyone. ㅇㅅㅇ

 

Their lives are comprised of a thousand missed chances.

They’ve lived in the same building for years, only a few doors down from each other; they have seen the other just as they turn the corner and disappear and have only ever heard each other’s names from their neighbors. They’ve never met and it’s likely they never will, every instance where their paths are supposed to cross is intercepted by some opposing force. Jinyoung realizing his shoe is untied right before he leaves, delaying him by the exact amount of seconds that it would take him to open the door and run right into Jaebum, who is rushing down the hallway with papers in his hand and his briefcase hanging off a shoulder. Jaebum in the train station, eyes on his phone, hand out to reach for his daughter where he’s walking with her, his fingers only inches from brushing against the back of Jinyoung’s hand before he hears his daughter call his name. He turns away, their hands barely missing each other, Jinyoung melting into the crowd, away, away, away. Every missed chance is another minute of sadness the two of them endure in their beds alone, blinking away the image of a lover’s face from a dream that they can’t quite remember when the sun splashes light through the curtains every morning. They exist parallel to each other in a world where soulmates exist; where there are signs and tells to identify them, and a feeling in the chest that breathes  _ yes, I’m home  _ when they are found. 

But fate, or something that looks like her, always blocks their view and they slip past one another, unnoticed.

 

__

 

“Do you believe in love at first sight?” 

Jackson looks at him from where he’s got his feet kicked up on his desk, relaxing. Jinyoung would tell him to get his ratty sneakers off the furniture but Jackson his best friend so it’s nearly impossible to get him to do anything. Jackson’s blonde hair falls in his eyes as he studies him, and Jinyoung feels mildly uncomfortable until Jackson shakes his bangs away and laughs.

“Are you stuck on the soulmate thing again?” 

Jinyoung sags backward in the dark leather of his office chair. “Well you don’t need to say it like that, do you?” 

Jackson shrugs, putting his feet on the floor and reaching over to grab some of the candies out of the dish on the edge of Jinyoung’s desk. Jinyoung makes a noise at him, gently slapping his hand, but not hard enough to make him drop the candy and Jackson grins as he pops them all in his mouth at once. 

“I have to say it like that,” Jackson mumbles, attempting to talk around all the bright, sugar coated candy. “Because you  _ are  _ stuck on it.”

“I’m not  _ stuck  _ on it––”

Jackson barks a laugh and Jinyoung tries to ignore the way little crumbs of rainbow hit the edge of his desk. “Ha! I’m your best friend, remember? You can’t fool me, Park Jinyoung. I know you’re stuck on the soulmate thing. But don’t worry!” Jackson wipes a hand across his mouth, leaning forward in the chair to rest his elbows on Jinyoung’s oak desk with his chin in both hands. For emphasis, Jackson opens his big eyes as wide as they’ll go and flutters his eyelashes to say,

“You’ll find your prince charming. You just have to make eye contact, remember?”

Irritably, Jinyoung pushes Jackson’s elbows off the desk and doesn’t smile when he squawks indignantly. “I don’t think eye contact is enough to determine a soulmate, Jackson.”

“Come on. How long have you been on this planet? You know that’s exactly how it works.” 

Jinyoung sighs. “Aren’t there cases where it’s different? People get married all the time to people who aren’t their soulmates.” 

“You’ve been alive for twenty-five years, Jinyoung-ah, so I know you’re not that naive. People can still fall in love and get married, you know. But they always find their soulmate in the end, don’t they?”

Jackson is looking at him triumphantly, as though he’s just proved a massive point and the argument is over. He deflates visibly when Jinyoung says,

“I don’t know. Do they?”

“Jeez, you’re so negative! If people finding their soulmates even after years of marriage wasn’t a thing, you’d be out of business, don’t you think?” 

This is true. Jinyoung just rolls his eyes when Jackson smirks at him after he receives no response. Jinyoung works in the (quite lucrative) business of soulmate marriage divorce counseling, which means he is a mediator for people who are separating from those who are not their soulmate once their soulmate has been found. It’s not exactly fun, as most of the time the people who are on the receiving end of the divorce feel miserable while the person who had found their soulmate is elated, walking on air, desperate to get the divorce finalized. This is where Jinyoung comes in: those who aren’t so lucky get to go over paperwork with him and do all the mundane work that comes with getting a divorce in the 21st century. It isn’t fun by any means; Jackson likes to attribute his total lack of belief in the soulmate process to how depressing the nature of his work can be.  _ You’re so jaded, Jinyoungie,  _ he likes to say, kicking his feet up in that habitual way he does like he’s a wizened old professor preaching to the youths.  _ You just see the bad of it all the time, and don’t see the good. You’re letting not finding your soulmate get in the way of, you know, finding your soulmate.  _ Jinyoung doesn’t think that’s quite the case––work is work. It’s not always pretty but  _ someone  _ has to do it. 

Speaking of which, he’s actually supposed to have a client come in soon, and that means it’s time to give Jackson the boot. 

“Well, thanks for being useless.” Jinyoung stands up, one hand buttoning his suit jacket as he motions to the door of his office with the other. Jackson sputters, limbs flailing in the chair where he very noisily declares his offense. “I have a client coming in soon, Jackson. You have to go now.”

Jackson leans over his desk instead of taking the requested leave, dark eyes scanning the paperwork. “What’s their name?” 

Sighing, Jinyoung doesn’t bother to fight him, opting instead to sate his curiosity to get him to leave faster. He moves some papers around and finds the file. “Im Jaebum, I guess.” 

“Did he find his soulmate?”

Jinyoung didn’t actually read into it that far, so he’s not exactly sure. He tilts his head to read the rest of the letter. “It doesn’t look like it. It doesn’t look like his wife did either…”

“So he’s coming to a soulmate divorce office for that? Why doesn’t he just go to a regular legal firm?” 

Shrugging, Jinyoung comes around the desk and nudges at Jackson’s backside with the toe of his shoe. “I don’t know. We can handle regular divorces, we just don’t because we’re specialized. If he’s got something important that he wants to keep, he might need more help.”

Jackson grips his ankle under the cropped leg of his suit pants and tugs lovingly before pushing it away and standing up. He smooths down the front of his raggedy college alumni sweater. “Don’t get too hung up on the soulmate thing, Jinyoung-ah,” Jackson says, his voice soft now instead of teasing. “You’ll find yours. And you’ll be happy.”

His heart seizes painfully, and sets back in a slower, sluggish rhythm. He tries to muster up a smile as he walks Jackson to the door but he can’t. 

“Yeah. Maybe.”

 

__

  
  


As it is, Im Jaebum never shows. 

It's not unusual for clients to bail at the last minute. In fact, it happens quite often, either due to someone changing their mind or just a generalized reluctance. In any case, they tend to book appointments back to back for this reason, and Jinyoung files Im Jaebum’s papers away in his desk as he readies for his next client. But even so, something feels...strange.

He can't explain it, but there's a low thrum of feeling holding a steady vibrato in his chest the whole day after Im Jaebum doesn't show up. It's an odd feeling, as though he's thought of something but can't quite remember what it was or why it was important. The name itself tickles the edges of his mind, teasing him,  _ Im Jaebum Im Jaebum Im Jaebum…...where have I heard that name before?  _ He’s sure he has, somewhere, somehow. Why else would he feel bothered by his missed appointment if it wasn't, in some way, important? Park Jinyoung isn't a superstitious man, and despite growing up being told over and over  _ one day son you’ll meet the love of your life, and here's how!  _ and seeing countless versions of How to Meet Your Soulmate Without Really Trying, he still isn't entirely convinced that all it takes is eye contact.

It's love at first sight, literally and truly, and Jinyoung's a run-of-the-mill pessimist but even so he's pretty sure it's bullshit. Despite seeing the “soulmate effect” almost every day in his office, he doesn't believe that just simply locking eyes with someone is enough to know that they're your soulmate. Falling in love outside of a soulmate relationship is possible; people do it all the time. People can fall in love thousands of times over and be loved a million more before they meet the one person who will change them forever. Isn't that better, Jinyoung thinks, to be loved a thousand times than to lock yourself into one, single love? What if the love isn't big enough, isn't small enough? What if the love just isn't  _ enough? _

Jinyoung sighs. He closes his eyes and drops his head back against the leather of his chair as his last clients for the day leave the room in a stiff silence. He usually doesn't think about the whole soulmate business too much; at work he mostly tunes it out and treats it like a regular divorce and when it comes up in conversation he always finds an excuse to leave. The times he thinks about it most are when he wakes up in the mornings from a vivid dream about a man with soft hands and a strong jaw with sharp eyes dotted by two pretty moles, the man having touched him so delicately in his dream that Jinyoung can't remember if in dreams he is himself or he is something made of porcelain. He can remember only parts of the man’s face, never the whole thing; it is only ever cast in shadow when they touch in his subconscious and in the morning Jinyoung’s heart sits painfully at the edge of his empty bed as he blinks away the images, piece by piece. 

 

__

 

“Nyeongie.” 

Jinyoung blinks, eyes focusing on the slender fingers of his sister’s where she’s snapping them in front of his face to get his attention. She’s smiling when he looks over at her, arms crossed loosely over her stomach in an eerie copy of their mother. He would never say this to her, though, for fear of being swatted upside the head.

Instead he just blinks at her again, more theatrically.  _ I’m awake.  _ “What?” 

“Someone has been trying to get your attention for the past five minutes. Are you going to ignore her all day?”

Jinyoung looks down and across the room that has been painted in bright yellows and pinks, garden motifs along the baseboard with smiling bugs and suns painstakingly drawn between the vibrant leaves by a flock of tiny hands. Standing near the cubbies stuffed with toys and paper and beside a painted flower twice her size is a familiar little girl with lopsided braids and kitty-cat eyes.

He smiles at her; she shyly tucks her chin to her chest and shuffles sideways to hide herself by the cubbies labeled sloppily by children just learning how to write. Bright, plastic backpacks hang on hooks above her head and don’t throw her into as much shadow as she probably thinks it does. Standing beside him and watching the whole thing, his sister laughs. 

“Sumi-yah,” Jinyoung calls softly, knowing that even over the noise of screaming children and a television in one of the other room playing the chaotic  jumble of a children’s variety show she can hear him call to her loud and clear. She looks at him over the heads of her playmates as they chase each other back and forth across the grass colored carpet and smiles into her arm. “Are you not going to say hi to me?” 

As if she had been waiting for permission, the shyness melts off of her as her face erupts into a piano-checkered smile of missing baby teeth. Her familiar happy screech makes him laugh as he bites both his lips and bends, opening his arms to catch her when she tears across the room and throws herself around his neck. Jinyoung swoops her up, swinging her sideways to rest on his hip while she squishes her face against his cheek.

“Jinyoung-oppa,” she says, leaning back to look at him with her tiny fingers laced together against his neck where she’s still clinging to him for dear life before falling forward to boop her cheek against his again. “Daddy is late again today.”

Jinyoung exaggerates a frown and leans into her, the dark strands of their hair blending as he walks her across the room to look out the window just to the left of the cubbies. The both of them press their faces against the glass, watching the ebb and flow of foot traffic pacing back and forth like a slipstream as cars whiz by, honking and weaving as they go. Cold February rain strikes the pavement in fat, heavy drops while the hustle and bustle of regular life goes on like a tv show before their eyes. 

Solemnly, she says, 

“I hope he’s not with mommy again.” 

Jinyoung shifts awkwardly. He’s not sure he really wants to know about her dad’s marriage problems, especially from her; children are always brutally honest and even though he’s never met her father despite always stopping by to see her and his sister at this daycare that she runs on his way home from work, something in him can’t seem to stomach that his favorite little girl has a troubled home life. Plus, if he’s ever at the front desk when he arrives to pick her up, he can’t imagine how awkward he would feel knowing about what’s going on at home despite having never met.

“Mmm,” he replies, blinking owlishly out the window. He hopes it’s noncommittal enough that it’ll sate her need for an adult’s response without going into more detail.

He should know better, though. 

She heaves a sigh unfairly tired for someone just above the age of five, and seems to ragdoll her weight against the side of his head like she’s just too exhausted to hold herself up. “Mommy hasn’t lived with us for a long time, you know.” 

Sumi has told him this before, so he knew. He leans his head against her tiny one and nods. “I know.”

The watery grey of the sky reflects in the puddles of water gathering on the sidewalk and reflects in the pools of her eyes, so dark brown they’re almost black. Part of him wonders which parent she looks more like, her mom or her dad? He’s never met either of them, so he guesses it doesn’t really matter, but despite the fact that he sees her all the time there’s still something just unsettlingly familiar about the shape of her face. 

“I think she found her soulmate and just won’t tell Daddy.”

Huh. That’s weird. In a world full of soulmates it makes little sense to keep that secret, but who is he to judge? He doesn’t even believe in the whole thing. Jackson’s little voice in his head adds:  _ Supposedly. _

“Sumi-yah. I’m sorry.” 

“It’s okay,” she says, her thick eyebrows coming together in the middle above her nose when she scrunches her face. “I just want Daddy to be happy, like me, or Soyoung unnie, or even you, oppa! But sometimes when he wakes up, not even Nora can make him happy.” She shrugs, looking away from the bleary, rain streaked window. “When I ask him he says it’s ‘cause he had bad dreams a lot. Oppa, do you have bad dreams, too?” 

He’s not sure why, but for some reason the way she says this makes him think immediately of the dreams he has often of a man he doesn’t know and can’t remember when he wakes. Someone with a face and a body and a beating heart that thrums like a livewire underneath warm skin; the details are so muddy, so buried under murky layers of groggy morning forgetfulness that he can’t ever tell if it’s someone his mind has created for him or if it’s a real person. He’s not sure even if the dreams are good or bad, but he knows that they leave him every morning to sink into the forgotten pits of his memory while his heart remains scooped out and empty in the hollow of his chest, a homeless bird taking shelter from the cold.

He swallows. “I don’t think so.” 

“Oh,” she says. Brightening, she continues, “Oppa, will you—“

“Nyeongie!” his sister calls, and he looks backward over his shoulder in the opposite direction of the glass front doors stamped with tiny, colorful handprints. His sister is hanging out of a doorway to the back room where there’s a small kitchen and a staff bathroom, her hair a mess where a little boy covered in blue paint is currently giving her navy highlights. He laughs and Sumi tightens her arms around his neck like she’s reluctant to share his attention now that she’s gotten it. 

“Yeah, noona? Need some help?”

The look she gives him is comical in its sarcasm. He bites a laugh behind his lips and turns to face Sumi. “I have to go help Soyoung. If I don’t see you before you leave, have a good day and I’ll see you next time I stop by to say hi, okay?” 

She heaves a dramatic sigh; her eyes roll theatrically and then land on something outside the blurry window that makes them widen in surprise and happiness. “That’s daddy’s car!! He’s here!”

Jinyoung laughs. He sets her down on the ground, watching her jump up and down with her denim covered arms raised above her head as Jinyoung teases her by taking down her pink and yellow Pororo backpack as slow as possible. By the time he finally hands it to her and she slings it on over her tiny denim jacket, her lopsided braids have started to come undone with the way she bounces around in her tiny pink and white adidas. 

“Wait for me or Soyoung noona or one of the staff to come to sign you out, okay?” he reminds her, and she straightens up to give him a serious face and an eager salute. He makes sure to keep an eye on her where she waits eagerly by the front desk for her dad until he slips into the back room to grab some damp towels for his sister. 

The lights are dim, throwing the supply closet into eerie shadows as he rifles around the shelves looking for a couple of clean towels to use. There’s a part of him that can’t stop thinking about what Sumi had said about her dad having bad dreams all the time, and how it had immediately reminded him of his own. For someone as practical as himself, it feels stupid to dwell on something so totally minimal and coincidental: people have bad dreams all the time. All over the world people are having bad dreams. Why should this be anything like his own situation?

But, regardless of the rational side of him telling him it doesn’t mean anything, there is a frantic piece of his heart that has broken off from the rest and is suddenly very, very curious about Sumi’s father. 

Wanting to catch them before they leave and maybe meet him (and, if he’s honest with himself, ease his suspicions even if it means being initially disappointed), Jinyoung rushes into the bathroom to wet the towels for his sister before he’s depositing them onto her paint stained lap and going back into the front room. He hopes he’ll be able to sign them out, saying goodbye to Sumi while seeing her dad for the first time and calming the strange fluttering in his chest. 

But the feeling sours. When he enters the lobby, there’s only the fleeting sound of the bell over the door as a pink and yellow plastic backpack and a tall, dark haired man disappear into the rain and fade into the Monet painting that has become the rainy city streets. 

 

— 

 

The dullness of daily life continues, in some strange, Groundhog Day-esque pattern of the day in, day out. Life is more colorless than it seemed to have been before; rain comes more often now, out of season, and the raindrops in the cold air seem to fight against the violence of reds, yellows, pinks, and whites that are flower bouquets spilling from the street stalls in what feels like every direction. A week away from the most romantic time of the year and though Jinyoung has always been a self-professed pessimistic skeptic, the conglomeration of recent events have left him with heavier dreams and an even heavier sour taste in his mouth regarding all things romance. 

As he sits in his office in a glittering high rise, helping clients sign papers and typing up document after document stamped with legal letterhead that says  _ Petition for Divorce,  _ Jackson’s disembodied voice comes to him more frequently than it ever has before:

_ Are you still stuck on the soulmate thing? _

_ No, _ he would say, in any other instance.  _ Of course I’m not stuck on it, I don’t believe in soulmates.  _

But, this is, as much as he’d like to argue, not quite true. Though he has seen the way that the soulmate system dictates the love lives of humanity, and how cruel it can be, though he has seen the way the spouse has cried when their  _ other  _ has found  _ their  _ other and left, though he has felt the heaviness in his heart of a sadness so profound he could not speak it into a physical thing to be measured by words and said to anyone who would listen  _ I don’t believe in soulmates,  _ the dreams do not lie. The voice that calls out in the empty echo chamber of his heart for the light to brighten the darkness of it cannot be stomped out no matter what he sees, no matter the documents he files, no matter the tissues he hands across the desk to someone who cries at their new loss. 

_ Are you stuck on the soulmate thing again?  _

_ Of course I am. _

_ Of course. _

 

__ 

 

The week leading up to Valentine’s Day is utterly enshrouded in misery. Not only is there a seemingly massive influx of clients he has to see, but the rain persists with no regard for the season. Romance floods the streets like water: street stalls are impossibly full of flowers, somehow, and jewelry stores are crowded with people spilling out from their doors into the streets with the eagerness to buy. He’s not sure if it’s always like this, so saturated and rich with feeling, and if he just hadn’t been paying attention, but the suspicious part of him wonders if fate has just been playing a cruel joke on him for the last twenty five years. The itch that Sumi had unknowingly awakened in him about the subject of his dreams only seems to grow like a mold he can’t scrub out in a place he can’t reach. 

And those dreams. Oh, those dreams. 

Each night they had grown more vivid, more powerful. Sometimes they were innocent: little glittering things of walks on foreign beaches, barefoot in warm sand, the mandarin orange coin of the sun half dipped in cerulean water and shining along the wavering surface like a line of burning oil. Hand in hand with someone only taller than himself by a few inches, if that, their shoulders bumping in the soundless film reel of silent movies. He wakes up on the mornings after these dreams with the wind and rain howling through the emptiness in chest. The side of his bed unoccupied by bodies except for those who stay for one night only like a road show seems colder now, the ghost of a depression where a frequent body left a permanent mark.

Sometimes they are not so innocent, flashing things in reds and blacks and dim oranges like candlelight. His body is a torch, erupting in flames where familiar, strong hands grip him in the rough places and touch gently in the softer ones; the catch and drag of skin on skin as square teeth sink into his neck and blunt nails force his back into an arch. Sweat glistens in low light, dark hair plastered to temples, thick lips bitten thicker and pinked rosy from kisses. These dreams wake him up in the middle of the night, an soreness drawn up in his groin that throbs between his legs even as the one in his heart burrows deeper, a persistent ache. On nights like these he squeezes his eyes shut against the tears that leak from his eyes as he roughly pumps his cock, wishing with a futile desperation that he could remember something else besides two twin moles above a slanted eye that make up the man that haunts his dreams like a faceless ghost. 

Jinyoung blinks himself awake in the mornings, trying to hold on. The curve of a jaw, the dark strands of hair, the bare hint of a naked, tanned shoulder. Dark moles above the eye, a pair of eyes in itself, piercing through him.  _ Who are you? Who are you?  _ A mantra, repeated; a weight on his chest that holds old oxygen in his lungs as he gasps for breath around the loneliness that seeps in like a dripping faucet. Jinyoung struggles to remember the face, so vivid in his dreams, but stolen from him as soon as the sun turns his eyelids to red-gold. Taunting him.

Jinyoung still gets out of bed, heart heavy. He pulls his suits down from their hangers with cold hands and pulls them over his tired arms and legs. The same dark tie he always wears is looped around his neck like the noose it has started to become, and it flattens it down against a thin chest echoing with the slow thud of a heart that beats for someone it has yet to know.

_ Are you still stuck on the soulmate thing?  _

He looks at himself in the mirror, fundamentally the same, yet so changed, aching for the body beside him to complete the puzzle his life has become. 

_ I think fate has other plans for us. _

 

_ __  _

 

The dreams persist for another week, and seem to grow in number and intensity the morning of Valentine’s Day. The day itself sucks in general, a corporate holiday, a shallow thing of candy and fragrant flowers and sex. For Jinyoung it’s all of those things plus the last minute clients who found their soulmate on the subway that morning and are desperate, Mr. Park, to spend their first Valentine’s Day together as soulmates. 

Whatever.  _ Sign here. Sign here. Initial here. _ The day goes on as it always does. He hopes that the mediocrity of it all, tears of joy and huge displays of fruits shaped like hearts and bears, knocks whatever has gotten into him back out so that he can continue to live his life as he had before: the careful pessimist, always a bridesmaid and never the bride. 

But, of course, it’s not quite that way. The lopsided feeling never leaves. The office closes at five p.m on the dot just like always, a regular Wednesday. He bows politely to the receptionist as he’s gathering his things, pushing open the glass doors of Park, Moon, and Jang Law Firm and internally bemoaning the fact that he had, once again, forgotten his umbrella. Which wouldn’t be so bad if he had driven his car, but his simple, black vehicle is parked under the ramada of his assigned spot in the apartment complex parking lot, in hopes that riding the subway like a regular 9-5 would take some of the monotony out of his routine. All of his efforts combined, however, are in vain. Jinyoung runs for the cover of the subway as rain pelts down on his head, wetting his hair, soaking the tops of his scarf and coat as he boards the underground just in time to beat the rush.

When he arrives home he thinks about calling Jackson to come over and at least give him someone to cook with (not for, god, never for, Jackson had tried his food once and acted like he was going into septic shock right then and there) but thinks better of it when he realizes it’s nearing seven on Valentine’s Day. And really, should Jinyoung really get tired of being lonely, it’s not like it would be so hard to go down to the bars and find someone to bring back, to fill that spot on the bed for the night, to drown his dreams in the sweat and effort of a strange body on top of his. But even so, the spark is gone. The thought of bringing home a stranger no longer fulfills him like it used to.

After cooking dinner in the microwave and changing into cotton pants and a t-shirt to sleep in, he sits down in front of the small television in his equally small living room to flip aimlessly through the channels. Everything is imbued in the reds and pinks of Valentine’s Day camp: cartoon hearts and flowers adorn every channel, cheesy movies playing on the others, reruns of dramas with the typical push-pull, 16 episode romance plot on everything else. Eventually he groans in an envious disgust and turns it off, opting instead to throw his dish in the sink and leave it for tomorrow morning. 

_ It’s too early to sleep,  _ he thinks to himself, turning his head to look at the clock where it reads 9:36 on the glowing red display. There’s a certain anxiety that curls up in his chest like a snake, anticipating and trying to guess what kind of dream he’ll have tonight: one sodden with color, tasting like chocolate covered strawberries and bubbly champagne kisses? Or one of the violence, the lust, the weight of a wet body on his own that draws his knees together? The tireless wondering and guessing in lazy circles like an old dog chasing its tail eventually pulls him down into a fitful sleep. 

Just when the dream has started to form, those eyes, that hint of a smile still hidden from him, hands in his hair in the beginning stages of what would be a romance dream had he been asleep long enough to have it, there’s a noise that pierces the silence of the entire building. Jinyoung’s eyes snap open as it pulsates, a high pitched whine that  _ beep beep beep _ s in merciless rhythm. The clock reads 11:27, seen fuzzily through one eye as Jinyoung squints and claps his hands over his ears against the noise assault that has so rudely interrupted his sleep.

“The fire alarm–? Wh–?”

_ The fire alarm!  _ Jinyoung opens both eyes wide, suddenly thrown off his bed when his body decides to act for him and propels him toward the front door where his shoes are waiting neatly for him by the step. The alarm blares on, a commotion on multiple floors audible even from inside his apartment as he hurriedly pulls his sneakers on while trying to block out the deafening wail of the alarm. Smoke, thick and black and noxious, starts to seep in under his door and strikes panic tightly into his chest: his bare foot finally slips into his sneaker and too scared to wait to do the laces, he stands up and throws open the door to step outside. 

Immediately he’s met by a wall of the black smoke, so thick he can barely see across the hall where his neighbor’s door hangs open, already emptied of his family. Jinyoung sucks in a nervous breath and coughs immediately, hand on his throat as he squints into the smoke like it’s going to help and feeling desperate to get to the stairs on the other end of the hall. He hopes someone else comes out of their door and joins him, a comrade in the chaos, but the doors from his apartment and on all stand open and void of their occupants. The sight of it scares him, all of these people already gone and him left behind; his heart starts to hammer in his chest that he might not make it out, legs spurring him forward into a run that ends as soon as it had began when he catches his loose shoelace with the opposite foot and hits the ground on his hands and knees.

He grunts, pain shooting up both of his thighs and into his hips as the impact of his knees on the rough carpet both burns his skin when they drag a little and drives upward. The alarm blares louder, new dinh adding to the pandemonium when the sirens of police, firetrucks, and ambulances wail and scream in tandem in the parking lot of their building. His biggest fear is getting lost in it, already feeling a little weak from the smoke he keeps inhaling into his lungs with every panicked breath. His elbows almost give at the thought that he would collapse right here, unable to be heard above the noise and would drown in this before he ever got the chance to know who he was destined to be with like so many others. 

Just when he’s about to try and stand back up, there’s a person behind him that he hadn’t heard leaning down and grunting low in their chest when they grip the top of Jinyoung’s arm in a strong hand to yank him to his feet. His eyes are blurry with tears from the coughing and the panic tightening his chest with smoke, so he keeps his eyes ahead and uses his hand to find the hem of the oversized t-shirt of his rescuer and grabs onto it for dear life. 

The noxious flood of smoke lightens only minutely when they hit the stairwell, and it’s only then in the echoing dark that Jinyoung hears the sniffling and quiet crying of a little girl that must be being carried in the man’s other arm. A strange thought occurs to him as the father guides him down the stairs at a breakneck rush––has he met this neighbor before? Because they must be neighbors, if he came from behind Jinyoung; Jinyoung lives closer to the stairwell, and he knows for a fact that the hallway to the right of his door turns a corner and then stops at a dead end. He had thought he knew all of his neighbors, but had there really been a father of a small child down the hall from him this whole time?

When they hit the last set of stairs, Jinyoung nearly slips on the last one: his foot slides on the soot that has gathered on the linoleum, but the man only lets go of his arm to slip it around his waist and bear the brunt of his weight against his side to catch him. No words are exchanged; the fire alarm is located down here in the lobby, and though the smoke has started to clear, the deafening siren that bleats over and over in a ringing panic makes his teeth rattle in his head as he and the father make their way to the front doors, propped open by firemen rushing people and directing them to the grass. 

Flashing lights assault his eyes in the almost daytime brightness of the parking lot where it has been deluged with floodlights and the oscillating red and blue of sirens. Jinyoung’s ears ring as the loudest parts of the commotion fade the further away they get from the building until they’re standing in a small patch of grass a couple of feet away from their other neighbors who spare them hardly a glance, shielding their eyes against the lights to look up at the smoke that billows from open windows of the apartment building.

Finally away from everything, the warmth of the man’s arm slips from his waist as he steps away to give him some breathing room. Jinyoung coughs a little more, eyes watering, one hand still clinging impolitely to the man’s shirt like he’s afraid if he gets too far away from him Jinyoung will still get lost in the utter melee the smoke has caused. Later he’ll find out the fire wasn’t serious, just that the smoke was; later still he would barely remember this and would have to be reminded. 

He straightens up and looks first at the little girl clinging desperately to the long neck of her father. Her hair is still done in messy, lopsided braids, as though it’s the only hairstyle he knows how to do; little pieces that have fallen out of the loose pigtails hanging over her skinny shoulders stick to her face with sweat and tears and mix with the same pigmented strands of her father’s. Little kitty-cat eyes and a checkerboard smile, his heart stops and waits for a signal that tells it to keep on beating.

“Jinyoung oppa!” Sumi screams, bursting into more tears than before, the immediate fall of them tracking more streaks in the soot on her chubby cheeks. “Jinyoung oppa! You live here too?!” 

“Sumi?” He asks, dazed, so confused at seeing his favorite little girl here intermingled with the chaos. Jinyoung finally turns his head, eyes finally falling on the man who carried here and practically dragged him down the stairs. “Wh––”

Their eyes meet. 

Oh, how wonderful it is. The power that surges through him when they do, the face of the man that has been haunting his dreams for as long as he can remember finally materialized in front of him lit up to blazing like an angel by white floodlights. Stupidly he remembers the fleeting thought he had, of whether Sumi looked more like her mother or like her father, the question answered: the curved jaw, dark eyes like two planets, kitty cat shaped and dotted with the moles he’s ached to trace with his fingers and memorize like maps. Lips, dropped open now in the noiseless surprise of a gasp he’s felt in phantom kisses on his neck, his chest, coming to with the yawning awake of a desire in the pit of his stomach to feel them in the waking world. Here they are, now, curving soundlessly around the syllables of his name parroted by the child crying against his cheek. 

Oh, how fierce it is, how painfully exquisite it is, to know that the love that bursts and blooms inside his chest like a midnight flower is permanent, retained within the everlasting well of him; how piercing and violent it is to know after so many years of searching in the aching, rainy depths of his heart for the light he had found it by accident, shone directly into his eyes by a man of beauty so intense he feels his heart break inside the new shell of it. 

_ Im Jaebum. Im Jaebum,  _ his mind supplies.  _ Where have I heard that name before? _

Jaebum reaches for him again, grasping at his shirt, eyes wet before the rain can even begin to fall when the lightning flashes and the thunderclap bursts overhead. Jinyoung grabs his wrist, feeling torn open and raw from the pure power of the feeling that flays his skin back with heat and births him anew, feeling awake in the world for the first time.

He blinks only once, holding Jaebum’s eyes as he inhales on a clean gasp.

“Oh, I’ve been dreaming of you.”

  
  


♡

 


End file.
